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The Psychology of Video Games blog

January 7th, 2010 (Visited 3325 times) Tags:

There is a wonderful new blog up called The Psychology of Video Games, written by Jamie Madigan, who has a PhD in psychology. It basically looks at individual “brain hacks” so to speak and explains specific incidents in games using them (similar to how I’ve referenced these brain hacks in that Games Are Math talk, in the second half; or even in A Theory of Fun)…

So far he has done posts on

confirmation bias
the commitment fallacy
fundamental attribution error
the hot hand fallacy
arousal and decision making
loss aversion
variable reinforcement and dopamine
sunk costs
contrast effect

The articles are lucid and funny… love the use of footnotes for humor. And it’s a great intro to the overall topic for those of you who have not dug into this stuff before. I can’t want to read more.

To be sure, some players get lots of kill streaks because they are tiny, radiant gods of destruction whose skills at the game put every last member of the Boston Celtics to shame (who prefer Halo 3, after all). But skill aside, does the kill streak system in MW2 work in the sense that it gives players some momentum that propels them towards otherwise unreachable acts of virtual carnage? Is a player who has 10 kills in a row any more likely to get the 11th one needed to unlock a kill streak reward than he is to get the first kill?

Nope, says the science of psychology and basic probability theory. It’s all in their head because splash damage and javelin glitch abuse aside, each shot is basically an independent event. For any given player, any perception of kills clustering together more than usual is just a product the human brain’s tendency to see patterns where there are none –a phenomenon called “apophenia” by psychologists trying to win at Scrabble.

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Cory Ondrejka said on January 7th, 2010 at 7:57 pm:

Unless — of course — the sneaky game developers are Daytona-ing the head shot collision geometry so that it is easier to get from 8 to 12 because that makes the player feel even more godlike, especially if that player previously had a rotten kill ratio and was more likely to shelve the game

Chris Lepine said on January 7th, 2010 at 9:45 pm:

Er, Madigan’s statement on MW2 assumes that players motivation and accuracy is not linked to the number of kills they make. Anyone who’s gotten a brutal ass-whomping in NHL ‘09 (on NHL ‘94, they’re the same game) can attest to how demoralizing it is when your friend is leading 9-0.

Is each goal itself an probabilistic event? Yup. But the point is that the winning player’s motivation to utterly destroy their opponent is tied to their achievements – the more goals they score, the more of a rhythm they develop in skilful scoring. Conversely, the losing player (I’ve seen this a hundred times) becomes their own worst enemy as they try to feverishly crank out shot after shot, hoping that a flimsy wrist-shot is going to make it in. Probability has very little to do with the likelihood of scoring runs, and much more to do with player motivation. A video game is not a slot machine, heh.

No offense to Mr. Madigan, but the “science of psychology” that he refers to throughout his blog is pseudoscientific mumbo jumbo that’s become popular in mainstream social psychology circles. It doesn’t stand up to any kind of honest criticism, and makes good fodder for Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader books, and not much else.

Raph said on January 7th, 2010 at 11:42 pm:

Hmm, I think you are being rather dismissive of some fairly established elements of human cognitive behavior. Regardless of whether users’ aim is affected by success (something I don’t doubt is true), apophenia is still a well-established phenomenon.

Eolirin said on January 8th, 2010 at 12:25 am:

Chris, read the actual blog post: http://www.psychologyofgames.com/2009/12/26/hot-hand-fallacy-and-kill-streaks-in-modern-warfare-2/

He’s not relating it to slot machines, but to basketball, which is also a skill based game. As much as there’s a (probably minor) psychological aspect to the next action based on the previous one, the fallacy is in thinking that it’s necessarily beneficial. It could just as likely be detrimental (cocky, take more risks, even more determined opposition), and over a large enough aggregate, isn’t predictive. Applied to an entire playerbase, streaking doesn’t make the next kill more likely to happen. It may in some instances, make certain people more likely to get another kill against certain other people, and certain other people less likely against certain others. To the extent that these forces exist, they’d roughly cancel out.

That aside, in FPSes, streaking is usually a sign of skill, and he makes this point as well. A skilled player will get to the 11 points or whatever they need without too much effort, not because they got the previous 10, but because they’re that good. Their odds of failure against the opponent as measured by their relative skill are such that you’re better off talking about their chances of dying, rather than getting kills.

Chris Lepine said on January 8th, 2010 at 5:40 pm:

@Raph – I am dismissing those established cognitive *theories* based on 10 years of study in psychology, and not out of hand. I am completing my doctorate in the discipline, and I am critical of the positivistic enterprise of psychology as a natural science, and many of the theoretical concepts that have been derived from it. Mind as computation, rationalism as the hallmark of human thought, those are all fine – but lack much real psychological traction. If I want to know why a *certain* player has produced (or has failed to produce) a run/streak of goals/kills, it will involve observing their behaviour over a long period of time; and not derived ipso facto from an anonymous statistical theory. I suppose this requires a long conversation to work out the details, but I do not reject Mr. Madigan’s application of social cognitive theory outright – just would rather say that it is a deeply limited understanding of what goes on in playing a video game.

@Eolirin – Take a look at some of the studies published in sports psychology. There is a *major* psychological aspect to the relation between successive acts, and the statistical research referred to by Tversky (et al.) provided absolutely no theory of how this could be true (ie. cockiness? anxiety? those are all wild shots in the dark, and not based on any empirical findings, ipso facto theories are what social psychologists are famous for). The point is that when I play NHL 94, basketball, or MW2 with a group of friends, our performance is *not* reducible to statistical outcomes. We all play as individuals in concert. Sure, we can say that on average out of 100,000 MW2 players there is a statistical improbability of repeatable streaking, but that cannot *ever* be applied to a single individual or small group of them. The explanatory power of the theory vanishes for individuals and small groups. We’re much better off, as I mentioned above, to look at individual cases and take a look at *the particular player* who has a streak, and look at the intervening circumstances. Skill? Definitely. Effort? Probably. Opponent’s relative skillfulness? Definitely. The number of previous points? According to sports research: definitely, modulated by the surrounding circumstances. Group “morale” is a *major* aspect of sports psychology.

Again, I did not want to take a huge crap on Mr. Madigan’s blog. He certainly is qualified to talk about games/psych. I just want to offer a bit of caution against swallowing some of this stuff whole, because there is an entire legion of psychologists who think differently.

And, because I neglected to say this earlier: thanks for the link.

Morgan Ramsay said on January 8th, 2010 at 9:02 pm:

pseudoscientific mumbo jumbo

—also known as… psychology!

Eolirin said on January 9th, 2010 at 4:26 am:

Which is why his argument was effectively about aggregates, as the gameplay mechanics apply to the entire population. Any given individual in a statistical aggregate is not more likely hit another kill on a streak, even if a specific one may be. That means as a gameplay mechanic, something that exists on a global scale, kill streaking represents noise. In a random match, where I’m not going to be playing with the same players over and over, all I should be concerned about are those larger statistical trends, because there’s no persistence that allows me to make a deeper profile of my opponents. I won’t be around them long enough. Rationally, the most reliable thing I have to fall back on is how likely it is that the person I’m dealing with is near the typical average. It’s not always appropriate to care about individual circumstance.

He’s not making the assertion you’re attacking.

We Fly Spitfires said on January 9th, 2010 at 5:27 am:

Fantastic I’m gonna subscribe to his RSS feed. Thanks for the link!

Mark Young said on January 11th, 2010 at 5:29 pm:

I’m a former experimental psychologist who, like Chris, is skeptical of how well research findings transfer to different real world contexts – cognitive science often seems brittle when you try to extend it to human factors. However, in this case I think the research that Madigan cites is more likely to apply than Chris’ hypothesis “the more goals they score, the more of a rhythm they develop in skilful scoring” which is exactly the “Hot Hand” hypothesis, isn’t it?

So we have two hypotheses (1) Hot-Hand/Cold-Hand and (2) Independent Events (each shot has independent probability of success). There’s support for #2 but I’m unaware of support for #1. I doubt that a player’s skill varies during a streak. I’m less sure but still skeptical that motivation would vary much, and then there is still the question as to whether that degree of variance would affect probability of successful shots. There are other factors that could be working in the other direction, like fatigue. Chris – how can you distinguish your belief from superstition?

Itwasntme said on January 11th, 2010 at 9:23 pm:

If this is about anything where player skill comes into play, I believe in the “hot hand” because of experience. If it’s a computer game where there’s no player skill, just the random computer generated chances, then no, other than the way computer randomness seems to stick at times. But that’s not a hot hand, in my opinion.

My experience comes from sports, in particular basketball. I was a decent shooter, and I understood the technical aspects of the shot, and my own motion when I shot well. When I went cold, I could tell that my motion was slightly off. Maybe my feet weren’t set right, maybe my arm moved out of sink with the jump, different things. I could not correct this simply by trying. My muscles just were tuned in wrong, and I would “think too much” about it. So what I’d do is not shoot for a while, then when I got a short shot I’d pop that baby in. Once I had the confidence going again, I’d start shooting longer range shots and be back in rhythm. I always felt that it was mostly confidence, but combined with the proper technique that we all learn by doing things and forming the muscle memory to make it come “naturally”.

Later I coached industrial league and intramural basketball teams. It’s hard to explain my principles to other players, so I played head games with them when they went cold. I worked on the confidence factor. When a guy went cold, I told him to trust me and did it with absolute belief in what I was saying so that they had faith in me. Having their faith is critical when working on their head like this. I’d tell them not to shoot for a while, then wait for a shorter shot, just as I did myself. Then, when they made a short jumper, I’d call a time out. First thing I did as the players came over was tell the guy “ok, your back, your hot, take good shots now.” Again, I promoted absolute faith in what I was saying, and this naturally rubbed off on the player. His confidence was back, and he made his shots again.

These players, they didn’t think about technique, all they knew was they were hot or cold. What I was doing was a combination of getting them to believe and resetting their muscle memory.

So, I believe in “the hot hand”. And I think it has everything to do with confidence and it’s link to the body in motion. And it’s not that the guy made some shots so he’s more likely to make more. It’s that he’s in sync from the beginning, he’s in the “zone”, and sometimes just gets a little bolder having recognized this.

I know, not scientific, but still.

Chris Lepine said on January 12th, 2010 at 9:03 am:

@Mark Young – Thanks for the reply. Re: “”how can you distinguish your belief from superstition?” My opinion here (and I’m sure it is unpopular by now) is that psychological phenomena concerning motivation, belief, etc – are indistinguishable from “superstition”. People’s beliefs do not obey, nor need to obey, logical/rational evidence to the contrary and often do not. Experimental social psych was an attempt at rationalizing human behaviour, and providing a theory based on that evidence. In that sense, I don’t see Madigan’s theory as anything other than as a kind of rationalistic/institutionally-supported superstition

My suggestion re: hot-hand is less a strict psychological theory (as you’d find in typical experimental social psych) than a possible explication of what happens *for certain skilful players* (such as “Itwasntme’s” account of Basketball) at a personal experiential level. Itwasntme’s phenomenological description of shooting hot and cold on the court gives me a much clearer understanding of what’s involved when a player’s confidence is shaken, the kinds of psychological steps necessary in order to build it back up. Note here that the evidence is all “superstitious” (according to social psychological theory) and self-interpreted, but the point is that I have a much more articulate understanding of basketball here than I could through typical experimental evidence. His hot hand account is true psychological insight *specific to basketball* and I’m sure pretty damned applicable to a video game scenario.

For instance, when I show my young cousin how to play difficult platformer games on the SNES such as Super Mario World, I often build his confidence level up by walking him through the easier parts of the game, until he develops a rhythm of movement. Once he gets to the point where he’s jumping on koopas without any kind of hesitation, I know that he’s “hot” and doesn’t need any kind of feedback. But when he dies a couple of times in a row, he gets over-careful and hesitates with the controller, and stops using the ‘run’ button. He ends up running cold real fast and dying constantly when his confidence is shaken. Whether or not this is “just his belief” or just mine is beside the point – the psychological validity of it is precisely in our believing (faith) that what we’re trying to achieve is real. Because of that, I think the whole ‘is that really science?’ debate is beside the point and distracts from important insights.

Raph said on January 12th, 2010 at 9:17 am:

Chris, seems to me like what you are describing is very much in line with “flow,” a lot of widely accepted elements of sports psychology, and also with many of the notions I have come across in readings on behavioral psychology. I can even see both your & Madigan’s being true — they are not necessarily contradictory!

Chris Lepine said on January 17th, 2010 at 6:32 pm:

@Raph – Indeed, Madigan’s views and my own seem to represent two aspects of the history of psychology that do not necessarily contradict one another (yet do not necessarily agree either – the natural sciences and the human sciences. Many thanks for offering up the space to open up a discussion.

.o. said on January 25th, 2010 at 5:11 pm:

For people who aren’t in the know, an entertaining and accessible primer on the hot-hand fallacy is here: http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2009/09/11

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